(Reuters) - Arizona's top education
official broke down in tears on Wednesday as he apologized for his
anonymous comments on Internet blogs that included comparing a birth
control activist to Adolf Hitler and calling for an end to
Spanish-language media in the United States.

John Huppenthal, a Republican who is scheduled to compete in an
Aug. 26 primary and would if successful run to retain his post as
superintendent of public instruction in a November general election,
told reporters at a news conference in Phoenix that he would not
resign.

"I’m here to renounce those blog comments," Huppenthal told
reporters. "They’re not what is in my mind, they don't reflect the
love that is in my heart.”

Huppenthal went on to say that he in particular felt bad about the
harm his conduct did to his assistant.

"She's been with me for ..." Huppenthal said, before spending over
20 seconds in awkward silence on the verge of tears and then wiping
at his eyes and walking out of the room, according to news footage
of the press conference.

Huppenthal admitted to writing the anonymous blog posts in a
statement his office released last week to the Arizona Republic
newspaper, which posted the statement online.

The Arizona Republic reported that in one comment on a blog post,
Huppenthal writing under the name Falcon9 said immigrants should
assimilate.

"No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv
stations, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English," he
wrote, according to the Arizona Republic.

In another blog comment, Huppenthal compared birth control activist
Margaret Sanger to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and wrote that "Sanger
has fed 16 million African-Americans into the abortion mills".

Sanger, who died in 1966 before the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision
that found women had a constitutional right to an abortion, created
two organizations that eventually merged and became Planned
Parenthood Federation of America.

Planned Parenthood is the country's largest provider of abortions,
and is frequently criticized by abortion opponents.

In other blog posts, Huppenthal called food stamp recipients "lazy
pigs" and said former President Franklin D. Roosevelt was mostly
responsible for the Great Depression.